A.D. 1710.
Dr. Richard Middleton Massey, formerly of Brasenose College, gave (with a few other books) a very curious and valuable series of Registers of the Parliamentary Committee for augmentation of poor vicarages, from 1645 to 1652, in eight folio volumes, with one earlier volume containing a list of livings in the diocese of Norwich, with their values and incumbents. To local antiquaries these proceedings are full of interest, while their historical and biographical value is equally great. They are now numbered Bodl. MSS. 322-330. Of the printed books given by Dr. Massey, most of those in octavo were placed at the end of Bishop Barlow's books, in the shelves marked D. Linc.
Three thousand pounds were offered by the University for the library of Isaac Vossius, but refused. But the books were shortly afterwards sold to the University of Leyden for the same sum[172].
[172] Reliquiæ Hearn. i. 205, 6.
A.D. 1711.
A watch which had belonged to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is said to have been presented by Mr. Ralph Howland, of Maidenhead.
Grabe's Adversaria. See [1724].
A.D. 1712.
'July 19, Died Mr. Joseph Crabb, Under-keeper of the Bodleian Library, having kept in ever since this day sennight. He died of a rheumatism, occasion'd by a careless sort of life. He was, however, an honest harmless man. He was buried on Monday night following (between 7 and 8 o'cl.) in Haly-well Church
yard, very privately. Upon his coffin was put, I. C. ag. 38. 1712; but I heard him say some time since he was 39 years old[173].' He is described in the following caustic terms by Zach. Conr. Uffenbach, in a letter written in 1713, and printed in his Commercium Epistolicum[174]:—